The Crawley men’s team did extremely well to finish third in their British League Division 2 match at Bedford on Saturday and this takes them to second place on the League table.
With two clubs to gain promotion after the fourth and final match in August it was be a great battle with Kent A.C as both teams are on 15 points behind Bournemouth’s 23 points with the Sussex club just having the edge at the moment with 836 overall points to Kent’s 816.
I was a tough and exceedingly hot match but according to tem manager Tim Kimber “The guys turned out an excellent performances in the heat”.
Improvement for Women
After struggling into sixth place in the first match the Crawley women really bounced back to form in Division one of the UK Women’s Athletics League by taking second team spot at home to Cardiff. This performance has lifted them to fourth place on the League table with 10 points just one League point behind second placed Woodford Green and third placed Nottingham who are both on 11 points with Cardiff clear with 16 points. Interestingly Crawley has amassed more match points than all but Cardiff.
Star of the match and certainly star of the weekend was sprinter Kim Baptiste in what was only Baptiste's second competition of the season as she had been concentrating on finishing her studies. Baptiste not only impressed with an outstanding sprint double she broke both 100 and 200 metres Sussex records with clockings of 11.50s and 23.24s and her 200m time takes her into the Top Ten of British sprinters this season.
Baptiste was also a member of the 4 x 100m winning relay squad who clocked 47.17s which would have been another Sussex record had all four runners been first claim members of the Crawley Club.
Team manager Jo Rowland won the shot putt with 13,83m and the “B” long jump with 5.79m after Elise Lovell had finished third in the “A” event with 5.82m and also finished second in the javelin throw with 42.22m while Hannah Brooks took second and third place in the 800 and 1500 metres in 2:11.48s and 4:32.21s.
Natasha Purchas took second place in the Pole vault clearing 3.70m while Sussex domiciled Jade Lally, competing for Shaftsbury-Barnett won the discus throw with 57.72m.
Youngsters to the fore.
It was the youngsters who turned in the winning performances for the men at Bedford with George Turner (U23) clearing 4.60m to win the Pole vault and Scott Staples, who is not 20 until the end of the year winning the Javelin throw with 58.39m.
But it was very much a team effort with most of the team members placing in the top half of their field with Niclas Baker taking second place in the 200 metres in 21.07s and another second place coming in the Shot putt through Sam Heawood who reached 15.71m while there was an excellent third place in the 3000m from the very much in form Paul Navesey who clocked 8:36.77s.
If you have any queries or want more information regarding this post, please Email Reg Hook.